Posted: 21st Jun, 2008 By: MarkJ
Virgin Media has launched a serious internal inquiry after a CD containing the bank details of 3000 customers went missing. The incident came to light at the end of May and is said to involve people that joined the operator via '
Carphone Warehouse' stores from January 2008:
A company spokesman told
The Register that transferring sensitive data customer on CD goes against its policy of using secure FTP tranfers. The data on the CD was not encrypted and also included names and home addresses.
Virgin Media emphasised the blunder had been "
isolated" and had never happened before.
The firm contacted the Information Commissioner's Office when it discovered the loss and took its advice on how to inform customers. It is paying for credit file protection for everyone whose banking information is now out in the wild, which means any fraud will be indemnified and credit histories will be unaffected.
It's understood that the operator has nearly finished contacting all of the affected customers, which is good news. However, the loss will come as a major embarrassment for Virgin. Then again, losing your customers data appears to be all the rage these days.. everybodys doing it.